Word: schellenberg
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...cited in the latter article, make a conscious decision to study, work, and spend time in Harvard Square because it is special. Students in search of fast food might consider that, like their Harvard degrees, the effort required to get the prize only makes it taste the sweeter. Catherine Schellenberg, Harvard University Staff
Meanwhile, more and more genes involved in the aging process are giving up their secrets. At the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Seattle, a group led by molecular geneticist Gerard Schellenberg has identified the human gene responsible for the disorder known as Werner's syndrome. People suffering from Werner's start life normally, but by the time they reach their 20s begin a process of eerily accelerated aging, exhibiting such ailments as heart disease, osteoporosis and atherosclerosis. Typically they die by their late...
...Schellenberg's work is noteworthy not only because he found the gene behind such misery, but because he knows how it works. The genetic sequence he discovered codes for the enzyme helicase, which is responsible for unzipping the DNA double helix before it replicates. If this unzipping is disrupted, helicase can't tweeze out mutations that randomly occur and instead allows them to pass through to the next cellular generation. Accumulate enough glitches, and diseases of aging develop. "We know that DNA is being damaged at a high rate," he says. "Knowing that a helicase is responsible gets us closer...
...mystery indeed is solved, the benefits could be enormous. Schellenberg suspects that the same helicase deficit that accelerates senescence in Werner's sufferers might, in a more measured form, cause aging in others. To prove this, he will create a strain of mouse that carries a mutant helicase gene so that he can learn how the enzyme works, and more important, how it can be manipulated. Depending upon what Schellenberg learns from these mice, it might be possible to sidestep genetics and simply use helicase boosters to slow aging in both Werner's patients and healthy people...
Running parallel to Schellenberg's work is research being conducted at the New York State Institute for Basic Research into the more devastating Werner's-like disorder known as progeria. People suffering from progeria grow old precociously too, but at a much faster rate; they are claimed by the infirmities of age in their 20s or teens. W. Ted Brown, chairman of the Institute's Department of Human Genetics, believes that progeria, like Werner's, is triggered by a single mutated gene. That genetic miswiring, however, may stimulate activity in the countless other genes that play a role in aging...